Undecided
by JustAPunter
Summary: Nia Bryn first came to Henrietta, Virginia centuries before Henrietta, Virginia came into being. Condemned to limbo between life and death and charged with overseeing the ley line and the spirits of the dead who walked the line each year for centuries, Nia is suddenly and inexplicably revived when the line is awoken. She ventures into Henrietta, seeking those who have awoken it.


"Oh!" Nia exclaimed. The sudden shock of consciousness and _being _always hit her like a bucket of cold water in the face. She blinked a few times, eyes unfocused, before raising her head and observing her surroundings. She expected them to be the same as they always were: a small clearing in the dense woods along the edge of the foothills, beyond which rose the purplish mountains. Through a screen of old growth trees, in a depression just beyond the clearing, the church was nestled on a path that led away from the line, out to the new road.

She blinked again. None of it was the same. The leaves on the trees were larger and a deeper shade of green. There was a dense layer of vines and undergrowth around the base of the trees, which obscured her view of the church that she knew to be just a few dozen yards away. The air was pleasantly warm instead of its usual biting cold. Also, it wasn't twilight, but a brilliant midafternoon.

"What…" Nia breathed. It was never like this. Never, in over six hundred years, had it ever been like this. It was always early spring, always cold (and usually raining), always just after sunset. It was always on the night of St. Mark's Eve. Always, except this time. It only took her a moment to understand why.

"The line!" she exclaimed. "The line is awake!"

She took her first wobbly step toward the church. It was always difficult, walking for the first time after being incorporeal for a year. This time, however, it hadn't been a year. Nowhere close to a year. How long had it been? A month, maybe? No more than two, certainly.

"That's the thing about time," she said aloud to no one in her airy, musical voice. "After being part of it for a while, you get to know how much of it has passed, even when you're not _here_."

After a few lurching strides, she regained her balance and bearings. It was a short walk through the trees to the church, although vines and undergrowth that usually weren't present in late April now obscured her path. When she arrived, the church was abandoned. Sure, it had been abandoned for centuries, but it was always the first place that Nia went when she came into _being _because there were always people here on St. Mark's Eve: two live people.

Not this time.

It made sense, she supposed. Two living, breathing human beings wouldn't just hang out at an abandoned church all the time. They had lives to live outside of the ritual of St. Mark's Eve. But not Nia: that _was _her life, if this could be considered living. Every St. Mark's Eve, the anniversary of her own death, she would suddenly find herself standing in that clearing in the woods, over the very spot where her bones had lay buried for centuries. It was her duty, they had told her, to observe those who would be dying within the next year. It was her duty to guide them and make sure they did not stray from the path, stray from the line.

In all that time, only one had been like her, in that he had died on the line. It had only been a few years before, and she had stirred when it happened. Just like it was now, it had not been on St. Mark's Eve that time, either. But a disruption like that in the energy of the line would certainly rouse her. They had told her this, too. It seemed that someone had been sacrificed for the sake of the line, but the ritual had been botched and so she had returned to her dormancy. She had seen him in a brief glimpse, this young man who had died on the ley line. His bones remained on the line for a few years, and that whole time she had been aware of his lingering presence in the world. But now she could feel that he just _wasn't. _In the same way that she _was, _that boy who had died on the line _wasn't. _And that could only mean one thing: his bones had been removed from the line.

Nia felt a pang of sadness for this; she had hoped that she would one day meet that boy with whom she had something in common. Maybe ask him what had gone wrong in his ritual. But no, it would never happen if his physical remains were no longer on the line.

She thought about the people she had seen at the church: year after year, the same two people: women. The elder of them could see and hear the dead; the younger could not (or at least, not before the St. Mark's Eve that had just passed). But this younger woman was special, too: she made Nia feel stronger, more real, more _alive._

Although she was certain that they would probably be able to sense her presence or even see her, Nia had never revealed herself to the women. She had been told over and over again that the dead did not consort with the living- not the decent ones, anyway. In death, just as in life, Nia had a purpose. And in death, just as in life, she was expected to hold to that purpose without fail.

For over six hundred years, she had done just that. But now, the line was awake. They had not told her what she should do if the line was awoken by anyone other than those who understood what it was, those who revered it and dedicated their lives to its purpose. In short, people like her and those who had brought her here. Those who had sacrificed her here. They told her what _should _happen to her if the line was awoken, but that was not what was happening.

The line was awake, and this meant that Nia was free. But this was not what she thought it would be. Freedom should have been a release from this existence- freedom should be _nothing. _ It should mean that she would never wake again. Because if the line had been awoken, that meant that someone else had been sacrificed on it- properly and in accordance with the ritual this time- and it would now be _their_ duty to watch over the dead on St. Mark's Eve.

Walking the circumference of the crumbling wall around the little ruin of a church, Nia pondered this. They had told her, they had instructed her on everything she was supposed to do (and not do), everything she should expect, and she had believed every word. She had not wanted to die, but the omens surrounding her birth and life had made her fate glaringly obvious. She was the one whom the magic had chosen to safeguard the ley line and guide wayward spirits of the future dead. By the time they had crossed the wide, wild sea, Nia had accepted her fate- even if she never welcomed it. So what did it mean, now that the ley line had been awakened, that someone else had relieved her of her centuries-long vigil? What was _freedom?_

Did it mean that she could leave the line?

That had been the biggest taboo of all: never, ever leave the ley line. None of them knew what would happen if she did- or maybe they did know and just weren't telling her- but it would certainly be catastrophic. But now…

There was no one at the church, and no specters of the soon-to-be-departed for her to guide. Nia was at a loss.

_Have I really been dead so long that I no longer know how to live?_

She was facing the church, standing beside the break in its encircling wall that gave access to the weed-choked path to the front door. Slowly she turned and faced the direction from which the two living watchers came every St. Mark's Eve: the direction of new road. Steeling her resolve, Nia took a tentative step. Nothing happened. She was still on the line. She took another step, then another, and another, and another. Nothing changed. She remained as present as she had been on any St. Mark's Eve.

Weaving between trees and hopping over rocks, Nia wound her way to the road that she knew was there but had never visited. Her first sight of it would have taken her breath away if she were still breathing. It was hard as stone, a long, smooth ribbon of gray-black stretching as far as she could see in both directions. This section of the road, she knew, was not on the ley line. And yet here she was, as corporeal as she had been in life.

Raising her head, she gazed in the direction of the valley below. A moment later, she set off on the road, walking toward the strange town now known as Henrietta.


End file.
